Alabama Moon (2 page)

“Should we shoot at 'em?”

“No.”

“If they're not any better than—”

“When the war comes, you'll know.”

“How?”

“I'll tell you.”

The next morning, Pap woke me at daybreak. “Get up,” he said. “We need to go into town and find out what's happenin'.”

I got excited about going to Mr. Abroscotto's. It was the only time I saw any of the outside world. But I was careful not to let Pap know how I felt. He said showing ourselves to outsiders was the most dangerous part of how we lived. One slipup and the law would be all over us. A trip to the store wasn't anything he wanted to see me excited over.

“We gonna take somethin' to sell, Pap?”

“Ain't got time. Get your britches on.”

As the sun slipped over the trees, we made the six-mile trip to Mr. Abroscotto's. We used to sell our furs to him, but it had been more than three years since we'd sold any. He said the prices were so low that he lost money just paying for gasoline to get them to Birmingham, where he sold them to companies that made clothes and things out of them. Since then, we had sold him the meat instead, along with vegetables we grew in the garden, and we bought what we wanted of the outside world with the money he gave us.

Most of the journey was through the forest, but the last half mile was on the road to avoid the big swamp. Pap said this was okay because the road was straight and long and we
could hear cars coming in either direction before they saw us. We had time to slip down into the ditch and lie still until they passed.

The store was on the outskirts of town, and the only building nearby was a small brick one that Pap said was owned by the power company. We could see a traffic light another half mile up the road which Pap said was the only one in Gainesville. I liked to watch the light as long as I could before Pap hurried me past the gas pumps and into the store. I'd seen a tractor go under the light once and even a yellow school bus.

Mr. Abroscotto was a strong man for somebody his age, like he used to be a logger or a policeman. His skin was dark as leather and his snow-white hair stood out against it. This time he told us that a lawyer named Mr. Wellington had purchased eleven thousand acres from the paper company. The property went from the Noxubee River to the big swamp and from the highway to Major's Creek on the east and west sides. By Mr. Abroscotto's landmarks, I figured our shelter was just about in the middle of Mr. Wellington's property. Pap must have been thinking the same thing. He walked out of the store without even saying goodbye. I hurried after him and had to walk fast to keep up.

“Slow down, Pap.”

He didn't answer me.

“Pap?”

He turned quickly and grabbed my arm and jerked me along beside him. “You keep up this time,” he said. “Run if you have to.”

A couple of weeks passed before heavy equipment started making a road and a clearing three miles away. Pap was nervous all the time and snapped at me when I made the smallest mistake. He got particular about me stepping on sticks and making noise when we walked through the forest. He kept stopping and touching my shoulder, which meant for me to be still and listen. I could tell by the way he acted that all those workers and equipment meant trouble.

We began to check our catfish traps at night, slipping down the banks of the Noxubee River by moonlight. In the mornings we remained close to the shelter unless we had something special to do. We worked the garden, tending our cucumbers, eggplant, and beets. All of those vegetables, when spaced the right way, grew hidden among the natural forest plants and wouldn't give us away if someone was to come across them. In the heat of the day, we'd get back into the shelter again and stay there until late afternoon. Pap began to watch and listen out the window slits as much as he worked on things. Even my reading began to make him nervous.

“Read to yourself, boy. You're too old to read out loud anymore.”

A month later, Pap and I were traveling a trail to the southeast of the shelter to get some red clay for pot making. We were less than a mile from the new clearing when Pap suddenly held his hand up in the air. I knew the signal and stopped. We stood there for several seconds and then, through the whine of mosquitoes, I heard hammering.

“Somebody's makin' somethin', Pap?”

I saw him clench his teeth and narrow his eyes. “Shhh!” he said.

After a few more seconds, Pap continued down the trail.

“What is it, Pap?”

“House.”

“Somebody gonna live there?”

“Yeah.”

I could tell Pap didn't want to talk about it, so I followed behind him and didn't ask any more questions.

After we heard the hammering, Pap couldn't keep his mind on his chores. He'd get me to working on something at the shelter and he'd say he had to walk off in the woods and tend to things. He was usually gone for a couple of hours. He didn't want me to know where he went, but I knew it was to watch the hammering.

One day he said, “You finish scalin' those fish. I got to go look for somethin' I left down the trail.”

“I wanna go, Pap.”

“Just a one-man job.”

“I've only got two fish left.”

Pap stared off at the treetops and bit his bottom lip. “All right,” he finally said. “Come on, then.”

Pap never meant to look for anything. We slipped through the forest using gallberry and cane for cover until we got to where the house was being built. They had cemented concrete blocks together and run timbers across them for the floor supports. The yard was stacked with lumber for the rest of the framing. I turned to Pap, waiting for him to tell me what it meant. His face was worried pale.

“Gonna be a big house, Pap?” I finally asked.

“Big huntin' lodge,” he mumbled.

“I've never seen somethin' built that big.”

He nodded his head and motioned for us to head back to the shelter.

We didn't go to the lodge together again. The days began to grow cooler and the breezes told us that fall was arriving. Things had changed between Pap and me. Even though I was with him just about every minute of the day, I didn't feel like he knew I was there. He was far away in thought most of the time, and even though I watched his face, I couldn't get clues to what he was thinking.

We got the steel traps out of storage and oiled them and wired the parts that were broken. The maple leaves had just started to turn and I knew we were over a month away from trapping season. But Pap didn't seem to be doing things in the right order anymore. One day he told me to go gather mulberries. It had been five months since the last mulberry dropped.

“Pap, there's not any mulberries.”

“Just do what I tell you,” he said.

I waited for a few seconds to see if he would realize his mistake, but he went back to sharpening his knife. I didn't know what to do, so I stepped into the forest and started walking, thinking that if I stayed gone long enough it would convince him that I'd tried my best.

Once I got away from the shelter, it felt good to be on my own again after such a long time staying close to Pap and feeling his worries. I looked up into the trees and studied the
yellows and reds of the changing leaves. The birds flitted about and made shrill cries from deep in the bush. It felt like I could breathe easier, and the smells of cedar and stinkbugs flowed into my nose.

Without meaning to, I wandered within hearing distance of the lodge. Once the sound of power tools and hammers reached my ears, I was too curious not to slip closer for a better look.

The workmen had moved a house trailer onto the site, and they seemed to be living in it. More lumber was stacked in the yard, along with roofing material and bricks. The lodge was already framed two stories high. I wanted to stay and watch the men working, but Pap's warnings about contact with outsiders started to play in my head. I crept back into the forest and took a different trail to the shelter.

Pap was sitting outside, weaving a basket from muscadine vine when I walked up. I stood in front of him, ready to tell him why I didn't have any mulberries, but he didn't ask about them or anything else.

Finally I said, “They're puttin' walls on that lodge, Pap.”

His fingers stopped and he looked up at me. “I don't ever want you goin' near it again.”

“But it's not even finished.”

“I don't care. You heard what I said.”

“You think maybe when the lawyer moves in we could talk to him and he'd let us stay on?”

Pap looked at me again. “I don't know, son! Why don't you get back to work and forget about that lawyer and his business.”

As fall passed, the leaves began dropping from the trees and the forest canopy became a solid green fan of pine needles. We pulled our deerskin jackets from between the cedar boards and waterproofed them with mink oil for the season. The carrots would stay in the ground for a while longer, but the other garden vegetables needed to come out before the first frost. I was always excited about the last harvest of the year because I knew it meant we'd go to Mr. Abroscotto's store to sell whatever we had.

I was afraid that Pap might tell me to stay behind, but he didn't. He shouldered the sack of vegetables one morning and told me to get my jacket and come with him. Pap would usually be walking slow and studying the forest. He'd look for deer scrapes and hog rootings and any other signs that might help us find game once the weather turned cold. But that day his mind was on other things and he stared straight ahead and didn't slow down.

Mr. Abroscotto was sitting behind the counter reading a newspaper when we walked in.

“Mornin', George,” Pap said.

Mr. Abroscotto set down his paper and stood up. “Mornin', Oli. How you, Moon?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

“What do you two have for me?”

Pap showed Mr. Abroscotto the sack of vegetables. “Cucumbers, eggplant, and beets,” he said.

Mr. Abroscotto took the sack to the scales. He weighed the vegetables separately and then put them all in a brown box on the floor.

“How does twenty bucks sound?” he said.

“If that's what you can do, I don't guess we've got much choice.”

Mr. Abroscotto nodded and paid him from the register. Pap fidgeted the money into his pocket, and I knew he was in a better mood.

“What more have you heard about that lawyer?” Pap asked.

Mr. Abroscotto shook his head. “Haven't heard much. See his workmen in here all the time.”

“You know when they're gonna be done?”

“They're tellin' me December. Gonna be moved in for Christmas.”

I stood behind Pap and looked around the store at the shelves of candy and canned food. I was careful not to let Pap see me, because I knew it would make him snap at me. Sometimes he made me wait outside while he went in and traded. He said it was too tempting for a boy inside the store.

“What's he gonna do with that big place?” Pap asked.

“I hear he likes to squirrel hunt.”

Pap shook his head and looked mad. “All that to hunt squirrels?”

“Guess some people got more money than they know what to do with.”

“Guess so,” Pap grumbled. “Let me have some salt, some .22 bullets, vinegar, box of nails, and matches.”

Mr. Abroscotto left to collect our supplies.

“How about some sugar this time, Pap?”

“Don't need sugar.”

“How about some canned peas like we had that one time?”

“We've got a pile of toasted acorns you haven't touched yet.”

I figured he wasn't in the mood to buy extras. “We've got everything we need already, don't we, Pap?”

Pap nodded. “Got everything we need,” he repeated.

We walked back up the road and into the forest, where we took a trail that I liked through a grove of cedars and tall field grass. That was the last time Pap left the forest.